


Dark Paths

by fairywearsbootz



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-26
Updated: 2020-12-26
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:28:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28336965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fairywearsbootz/pseuds/fairywearsbootz
Summary: Night after night, Dean just can't let go. (Written after the season 5 finale)__________Originally uploaded to Livejournal 2010-08-09
Relationships: Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester
Kudos: 2





	Dark Paths

_The muddy ground is soft under his feet, giving under his weight or maybe it's just him that's swaying. Sam's arm tightens around his shoulders and he shakes him off with an irritable snort, then clings tighter as the movement makes fireworks explode on his retina._

_This is not how dying should feel like._

_He always thought it would be quick, quick and violent. A bullet to the head, the claws of a Wendigo, a vampire's fangs in his neck. Instead he's got this, this being-tired-24/7, dizziness and nausea and a heart that's straining to pump blood though his veins so hard, the pain in his chest is overwhelming even now._

_A clean cut, that's all he's ever asked for, and now he's got Sam, oozing desperate determination, dragging him to this shabby tent in the middle of nowhere to see some goddamn faith healer of all things._

_They enter and Sam immediately heads for the front rows. Mustering up all his remaining strength Dean pulls him back, towards the dim, shadowed back of the tent._

_“Dean,” Sam starts to protest, but he cuts him short._

_“There's no way in hell I'm gonna go up there without checking this out beforehand.” He shoots his brother an incredulous look. “Jesus, Sammy, you'd think Dad and me had taught you a thing or two.”_

_So they wait in the back, and watch as some poor crippled bastard crawls upon the stage. They watch as the Reverend lays his hands on his forehead, as he walks down the stairs without crutches and a blissful expression on his face._

_They feel the chill in the air and they know something's wrong._

_The next days they investigate and put an end to the Reverend's wife's doings._

_One week later Dean dies in his sleep._

Only he doesn't. Because they pick him nevertheless, even at the back of the tent. Even as he stops outside, hesitant to enter. “God's will,” they say. God's will? Yeah, right. But whatever or whoever it is that's guiding them, they single him out. They pick him, they heal him. Some poor bastard dies for him at the hands of a reaper on a leash. But-

_The reaper approaches him slowly, step by step without haste, unrelenting. The car behind him presses into his back, cold glas and sharp metal. He can hear the voices from inside the tent, wafting by from far away. Layla is in that tent, getting healed right now. Layla, with her light hair and her sad eyes and the tumor in her brain._

_It only takes a second to decide, then he steps forward. His eyes never leave the reaper's face, not even as his knees give out under him and he drops down in the mud at his feet. His second last thought is of Layla, and the happy long life she'll lead._

_His last thought is of Sammy._

Layla. She's probably been dead for years by now. But somehow the sting that used to accompany that particular memory has lessened. Grown insignificant, small, together with so many others. There's only so much capacity for grief left in him, and it's all used up otherwise.

He couldn't have saved her anyways, and really, how?

He couldn't even save his own brother.

Later, then. Maybe here:

_The semi hits the Impala with sickening force, tearing through chrome and steel and pushing her off the road with laugheable ease. The last thing Dean hears through the haze of blood loss is the screaming of his baby, and the last thing he feels are pieces of her digging into his flesh. Then it all goes black._

That would have been a way to go, him and his baby together. But really, out of his control back then. Damn Yellow Eyes should've picked a demon who was a decent driver. Then he wouldn't have woken up in the hospital, stepped out of bed and seen himself with a tube down his throat, because that was a view he could have done without. Then his dad wouldn't have made a deal with the demon, who in turn wouldn't have-

_He can feel Tessa behind him as he sits on an empty hospital bed in a room that seems too dark, Dean's heartbeat the only sound on a floor that's too quiet. Her hand brushing over his head is cold, so cold he can feel it through the layers of his hair, but it's not an uncomfortable cold. Soothing, really, to be honest._

_“It's time to put the pain behind you,” she says._

_“Whatever,” Dean mumbles, “I'm as ready as I'm ever gonna be, I guess.” He jumps off the mattress, facing her. “Let's get this over with.”_

_Tessa smiles at him, and takes his hand, and then they're gone. As the demon enters the room mere seconds later, it's empty. It screeches in frustration, it's inky black form thrashing and sloshing to every corner of the room, every hiding place, but the reaper and her charge are nowhere to be found._

_John Winchester stands by his son's bed, Sam by his side, watching in disbelief as Dean is declared dead by tired doctors. They take the body to Bobby's to burn it, putting the folded up, crashed husk of the Impala over the grave instead of a headstone. For a couple of weeks they manage to get along, united by the memory of Dean and his sacrifice. But then the fighting start again, slow but steady, like a force of nature that can't be stopped. After a month they leave in different directions. John dies only weeks later when he's facing off a nest of Vamps all on his own. Sam crosses the country aimlessly from one side to the other, at loss for what to do now his family is gone, until one day he meets a pretty blonde at a rest-stop. She's snarky and witty and she knows everything about him and his family. She tells him there's a way to get Dean back, and he listens to her even when she turns out to be a demon. Her name is Ruby, and her eyes are as black as her soul._

This doesn't work either. As much as he gladly would have given his life for Sam, the idiot was just lost without him.

So when?

Shortly he skims over the memory of a tall lifeless body on a bare, shabby bed in an abandoned house, red eyes and a kiss that burns his very soul. But he doesn't go further, because this- not even in his thoughts can he change this.

Later still. Or earlier.

_The demon smiles at him, reveling in her superiority despite the Devil's trap above her head. A breeze carries her perfume towards him, a heavy, musky scent in the somberness of the night around him._

_“You wanna save your father, Dean?”_

And clearly this is an even worse scenario. Him over a year earlier in hell, even more time to break, and with their father back like this Sam most likely wouldn't even have needed Ruby to send him down the edge.

But then when? When?

Five years' worth of memories flitting through his mind. Places, people, monsters. Gunfire and laughter and rain drumming on the roof of the Impala. Sam and him and John, Sam and him and Bobby, Sam and him and Ruby, and Pam, and Jo, Ellen, Ash, Rufus, Gordon, Henriksen, Meg, Lilith,

_“Bela.”_

_The name scrapes roughly over his tongue, but he forces it out nevertheless._

_“Dean. To what do I owe the pleasure?” Her tone is light._

_"Where are you?"_

_"Where are you?" she retorts._

_“Not in my motel room is where I am, sweetheart.”_

_"Not-" A deep intake of breath, and suddenly there's panic in her voice. He sneaks a glance at the clock on the dashboard. 21:47 and counting. "But- oh my God."_

_"Yeah, I don't think that's where you're heading, sweetheart. Tell me, all that devil's shoestring still in place, keeping you nice and safe?"_

_"Dean, please," she's pleading now, her voice wavering, " you have to help me, please-"_

_"And why on earth would I do that?"_

_“Please,” she says, no, sobs, “I know I don't deserve this-”_

_“Damn right you don't,” he snaps, “but I don't either, so here's the deal. I'm guessing you're on your way to Eerie right now. There's a field on the road from Oleon to Jamestown, about ten miles out of town. We'll wait for you there. You'll tell us how to get the colt, and we'll keep you alive until we get it. Understood?”_

_Silence, stunned, then, “Yes. Yes. Thank-”_

_He clicks his cell shut. Sam throws him a worried look._

_“You think that'll work?” he asks, doubt etched into his face. "That she's not gonna turn on us the second we turn our back on her?" Dean takes his time as he pulls the Impala on the barren field, carefully not to hit any rocks hidden by the dark._

_“Probably, but it's not like we have a whole lot of other options left.” They exit the car and he lays his hand on the roof, the metal cool and reassuring under his fingers. "We're just not gonna turn our backs."  
_  
Sure. As if. That bitch didn't come clean with them until the Hellhounds were already chewing her heels off. She'd probably turned up, taken one look at them and shot Sam straight in the head. But still...

_The doors of the Impala click shut, the sound clearly audible in the crisp dark silence around them._

_“Guess she'll need a couple of minutes to get here,” he says, pulling a small flask out of his jacket._

_“Dean,” Sammy says, and_

“Dean”, Lisa says. Her voice is muffled from sleep, almost inaudible in the quiet darkness of the living room. “Again, really?”

There's frustration in her voice, weariness, but mostly worry for him. Dean just stares into the amber depth of the glass of Bourbon in his hands.

_The ground wet under his feet, the chill of the night air on the bare skin of his forearms,_

“Go back to bed, Lisa,” he says gruffly as he takes another swig.

_the liquid stinging in his mouth as he hands the bottle to Sam. Sam, who's leaning against the Impala_

“If you want to talk about it-” she starts, hesitantly, then falters. Finally he turns towards her, and the wary expression on her face almost pierces the cocoon he has woven around himself, but at the same time

_at his side, laughing and shaking his head as he takes the booze and drinks, tipping his head back_

he just can't let go. “It's OK,” he says, smiling, or trying to, “I'll be up soon. Just a minute, alright?”

Another moment passes where she just looks at him, and for a second she manages to draw him away from his past, into the present. For a second he considers putting his glass on the table, going upstairs with her, following her into their bed. Burying his face in the crook of her neck, feeling the warmth of her body and the pulse under her skin. To leave behind all these thoughts of death and night and the Sam-shaped hole right next to him for just a couple of minutes, just an hour-

_“Did you know that when you're looking at the stars, you're actually looking into the past?” Sam asks, his gaze directed towards the dark sky above them. “No need to try your lame-ass pickup-lines on me, Samantha,” Dean replies dryly and gets a push in the side for his effort._

_“Bitch.”_

_“Jerk.”_

“I'll be up in a sec,” he mutters, his gaze back on the glass in his hands. After a moment he hears her soft footsteps leave the room. He feels like a jerk, but then he closes his eyes again and

_This is where it all could have been prevented._

He needs to find the exact moment. Because when Cas shows up the next time, no matter if it's in a month, a year or 50 years, he will beg the angel to take him back in time again. On his knees, if he has to. And when this happens, he needs to know the exact time and place to go back to. To beat some sense into his younger self, make him walk a different path, let him die if that's what it takes, so all of this never happens.

*

In the morning he awakes on the couch, his neck stiff and his back sore.

All during breakfast he can feel Lisa's eyes on him. Sad, worried, with a hint of caution in them. He knows he should talk to her, tell her what's bothering him. But she wouldn't understand. Maybe if he told her all of it, right from the beginning, but he doesn't want to. Because right here, right now, these memories of his family, of his dad, his mom, of his brother, they are all he's got left.

It's selfish, but he's not gonna share that with anyone.

He knows this is not what Sam wanted for him and in the mornings, sitting in the sunlit kitchen with Lisa and Ben, he feels like he's chasing ghosts. He remembers angels and demons and the fucking Devil himself messing with their lives right from the beginning, and earlier.

But then it's night again, and the darkness around him is filled with Sam's voice, and he just needs to believe that everything could've been different. That his brother could've had a chance. And so he gets up, walks down the stairs to the living room, not even bothering to switch on the lights. Pours himself a glass of whiskey and thinks. Piece by piece, memory by memory, he puts together the path his father and mother, that he and Sam took. Divides the real crossing points, where they could have decided otherwise, from the fake ones. Thinks out consequences, dismisses them, makes up new ones. He runs through every single scenario he can think of, always searching the one point that could change everything.

And night after night, the only thing he comes up with is that he should never have allowed his brother to jump into that cage, or should have at least jumped in behind him.

So when two weeks later he comes out of a store and finds Sam leaning against the side of the Impala with a confused look in his eyes, he knows this is it. If there's any trace of Lucifer left in Sam, the world's lost, he is lost, because if there's one thing all those lonely nights have taught him, it's this:

He can never lose his little brother again.


End file.
